Back on track

 Quite the long hiatus from blogging...I know, I am a horrible person.  Wednesday was a busy one -- parish night of Confession (the Easter Duty!), then I hit the gym and made it home in time for Dr. Pimple Popper.  The ratio of English-speakers to Polish speakers was about 1:10; so either the Polish community is very sinful, or the natives are... moreso.  Oi.  Anyways, I crashed hard  Wednesday.  Thursday was Pub Quiz at Rustic Grill, where -- as expected (and should be) -- Team XI was once again victorious.  The questions are a tad on the easy side, and a lot of pop culture stuff, so they are not exactly my powerhouse.  But the grub is decent, and it's good to see everyone again and win.  Yesterday I hit St. Leo's -- not a new place, but quite good; fish taco platter is only $7.50, and you get the full panoply of sides.. they did overcharge me for the meal, but I didn't contest it -- it is for the church.  Mom spins in the urn.

I am reading Hopkins' American Empire, and it is...interesting?  I mean, it is ok; it's a semi-Marxist look at the rise and fall of the American "empire," which he takes to me economic and social ties, not just political, to account for US policy.  It is long, and some of the text is a bit much...more to the point, not much new.  Yes, there is a fresh look or take every so often, but a lot of the stuff I have read before.  And, he is a Brit, so he is obsessed with what calls our "gun culture," which amuses me.  Anyways, funny stuff yesterday; he went on -- at some length -- at the labor wars of the 1890s, namely how mass immigration greatly caused wages to fall during that time -- which caused all the strikes. A Marxist complaining about mass immigration?  Someone better not tell Bernie and AOC!

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jury-declines-convict-defendants-michigan-gov-whitmer-kidnapping-trial-rcna22516

This whole story...I guess I was surprised by the lack of a conviction; there just seemed to be so much evidence, and even if you account for the fact that the FBI seemed to be ginning up the crew... I do wonder how much of this was just jury nullification; the antics of the agents during the raid did seem a bit much, and the extracurriculars...well, it certainly didn't help the credibility of the FBI.

https://www.si.com/college/2022/04/09/clemsons-dabo-swinney-believes-college-football-is-headed-for-massive-blowup

Really, Dabo?  Really?  This could be me, but coaches like him are part of the reason why college sports are so messed up.  For years, they have commanded the high salaries, jumped contracts for bigger and better coaching gigs, spurred all this spending on stuff that does NOTHING for the classroom, kept kids from transferring, fought (mostly) to the last ditch against NIL-related activities... and now they complain about the course of the sport?